Heritage Glen: The Benefits of Affordability

After hearing from a wide range of Heritage Glen residents, it is clear that the benefits of living in an affordable home in Farmington are plentiful and varied. Many residents emphasized the physical quality and conveniences of their home: each unit includes a washer and dryer; the rental company, Metro Realty, takes care of yard spaces, exterior physical care, and much interior maintenance; and every home has its own private patio or deck.

High Quality & Convenience

For the fairly-priced rent that Affordable Rate and Market Rate residents pay, they receive a high-quality physical space that they typically would not receive at the same price elsewhere. In fact, Sara Rogers, a wife and mother living in a market-rate unit, described how her family has now saved up enough to purchase a home in Farmington, but they choose to remain in Heritage Glen because their unit and community are of such high quality: “They do a nice job on the exterior—maintenance is very good at getting to your issue, so you don’t have the worries of homeownership.”

Residents are both satisfied with the interior and exterior attractiveness and sustainability of their homes and feel positively about the maintenance of common yard spaces and the community’s mature, wooded surroundings.

Outside of the home, Heritage Glen residents enjoy close proximity to a major highway, Rt. 85, as well as food and retail only a minute’s drive away. The development’s location less than three miles from University of Connecticut Medical Center means that not only do residents have easy access to a high-quality medical facility, but medical and dental graduate students at the UConn site can live conveniently in a home within their budget.

“It’s been so affordable here. It makes the amenities that we don’t have—like a garage—tolerable,” said Rogers, who moved with her husband to Heritage Glen when her husband began dental school.

Strong Schools

Perhaps the most valuable resource that living affordably at Heritage Glen provides is access to the strong Farmington School System. For youths living at Heritage Glen, attending Farmington’s public schools means benefitting from not only strong academics, but also outstanding extracurricular programming, sports teams, special education services, and talented classroom teachers and staff. All of these are opportunities that many families formerly living in nearby municipalities such as New Britain or Hartford previously could not access.

Carmen Aquino is a mother of a 9-year-old girl and a 13-year old boy, and rents at the affordable rate in Heritage Glen. She praised the positive opportunities that accessing the Farmington schools has brought to her children since their move from New Britain. Carmen, who grew up in various parts of Hartford, says that she feels lucky that her children can receive such a strong education, including reading specialists, small class sizes, more parent-teacher communication, and more special attention for her children’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders. Both children also have meaningful adult mentors through a town program.

Says Aquino: “My children had to adjust to the school standards. They need a reading specialist, and there are smaller class sizes. They just get more attention, which is important because both of my kids have ADHD. They get all of this in Farmington, but they would not in New Britain [where they used to live].”

A Deeper Look Inside Heritage Glen

Has Heritage Glen been a success? Take a look at what the experts and statistics tell us about the following issues in this mixed-income community: